okay but hear me out, the way that single clamp light pools on the pile makes it look like a portrait of a very tired man's ambitions. what's the oldest thing in that stack, and do you actually think any of it comes back to life?

this is giving the back room of every electronics repair shop i snuck into as a kid! that bent-blade fan especially. please tell me you're keeping the shells even if they don't run, dead appliances make the best shelf pieces!!

looks like the dish pit after a holiday weekend. the kettle with the frayed cord is the one i'd take a hard pass on, and i once put a fork in a toaster because a customer asked if it was 'stuck'

oldest is the iron, that one's older than i am by a bit. fan and lamp are coming back for sure, kettle cord is getting cut and replaced. toasters are a coin flip, the dented one's element might be toast (heh). i'll post the pile after, not before, nobody wants progress reports.

THE IRON. okay that's the winner for shelf piece status, please tell me it still has the little fabric pad with the scorch mark!! also frayed cord kettle is absolutely a parts donor, but the shell would look amazing next to my dead radio collection!

the fork thing was years ago and i still maintain i was being helpful. fan with the bent blades probably wobbles like a shopping cart, that's the kind of repair you can hear from the other room. coffee cup in frame is doing heavy lifting tonight huh

exhibits A through F, one of which predates the guy who owns it. the iron is acquitted, everything else is awaiting trial. also filing the coffee cup as exhibit G, it's clearly the only thing on that bench that's functioning. case closed.

coffee cup was lukewarm by the time i took the photo probably. i'll say this, a fan that wobbles loud enough to hear from the other room is telling you something, most people just turn the tv up

pad's still on the iron, scorched exactly where your hand rests, which tells you a lot about whoever owned it before me. fan doesn't wobble, bent blade is balance issue not bearing. follow up photo when it's done or not at all

"or not at all" is the most gearhead sentence ever posted. also i stand by the fork, the toast came out fine

the scorch mark as a fingerprint of the previous owner, man. that's the good stuff right there. you ever try to find out who it was, or is the mystery part of the appeal? i'm the same way with my old gadgets honestly, half the fun is inventing the backstory.

balance issue not bearing, he says, like he didn't already tell us he spins fan blades by hand to check. give it a week and we get the photo or we get silence and i'm placing a bet on silence

tern placing bets on silence is the most supportive thing anyone has ever said to me in this forum lol. but in gearhead's defense the man literally posts shelf photos for a living, i think he delivers. the mystery owner thing though, yeah half the fun. my PDA on the bookshelf has some guy's old appointment reminders still on it and i've invented a whole saga for him. he was very busy on tuesdays in 2002.

taking the bet and raising it. if the fan doesn't come back i'll post a photo of just the bent blade on the bench by itself. no captions. as for the iron, no, i'm not looking up who owned it. it worked for them, it'll work for me, that's the whole relationship.

okay but hear me out, the scorch mark as a handprint is doing something to me as a painter. that's a portrait someone made without meaning to. bucket, you're telling me your PDA stranger has tuesdays in 2002 locked down? i need details, i want to know if he ever deviated.

this thread's got me thinking about an iron my mother had, must've been late sixties, chrome thing that weighed a tonne and took forever to heat. she ironed shirts on a board by the kitchen window every saturday morning, same as clockwork... anyway. frayed cords don't bother me as much as they should, we had wiring on the boat that'd make your hair stand up. still, cut it first gearhead, you know that.

exhibit H added: oldsalt's mother's iron, chrome, heavyweight class. exhibit I: the tuesday man, still unidentified but apparently very punctual. i'm updating the case file. the bet between tern and gearhead is now docketed as exhibit J and i want it on the record that i called the coffee cup the only functioning item. case remains open, actually.

okay the tuesday man: mostly tuesdays and every other thursday, 10am, no subject lines ever which honestly makes it worse. one entry just says "call R." and that's been living in my head rent free since like 2019. i've decided R was his dentist and the whole saga falls apart if it turns out to be anything more interesting, so i refuse to look closer. marlowe you'd paint this guy in a heartbeat i know you would

okay but hear me out, "call R." with no subject line is exactly the kind of detail i'd put in a painting and then have three people ask me what it meant. the fact that you've never deviated from the dentist theory is the most healthy thing about this thread. also oldsalt, saturday morning ironing by a kitchen window is basically a light study waiting to happen, chrome iron, steam, the whole thing.